


Letters from the Far Kingdoms: Post Script

by canis_m



Category: Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms
Genre: Age Difference, Future Fic, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Post-Canon, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-31
Updated: 2008-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canis_m/pseuds/canis_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An epilogue to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/522550">"Letters from the Far Kingdoms."</a> Taiki is welcomed home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters from the Far Kingdoms: Post Script

"You were missed," said his master that night. "And not only by me." 

They had not removed from the couch in the king's chambers since settling there, and between them had shared enough rice wine to license storytelling. Taiki was flush with happiness. Familiarity made everything in sight dear to him. When he looked at his master, a radiance suffused his field of vision until only Gyousou at the center of it was clear. 

"I was glad of your letters. This one took me by surprise." 

The paper Gyousou opened to show him was small. Taiki leaned to read it and saw that the handwriting was an unkempt version of his own. He had no memory of writing it, but the reason for that became plain as he read. Sobriety returned to him in abrupt pangs. He began to shrink away from Gyousou's side, into seat cushions that were too small to hide him. "I never--I never meant to send that. I meant not to."

"Some thoughtful person must have dispatched it." Gyousou held the letter at arm's length, not unsmiling. "If they convinced you Han sake is stronger than Tai, your palate has been too coddled. I have the remedy here."

"Master--" 

On the tabletop a second pitcher and porcelain cups stood ready. Setting the letter aside, Gyousou reached for the cups. "Distilled in I Province from the last crop before frost seals the earth. By one mouthful a man of I can tell at what altitude the grain was grown, whether the slope faced south or west." 

"Master Gyousou," said Taiki, before his voice diminished to nothing, "if I drink something like that..."

The cup weighed in his hands like a stone. The liquor Gyousou poured into it was the color of glacial ice. Taiki resigned himself: he had cast aspersions on a matter of national pride and could not in fairness escape unteased for it. When his master indicated a toast he raised his cup. He expected bitterness, but on his lips and his tongue the liquor tasted of snow. He swallowed in surprise, then blinked fast and hard. It seared a trail like molten gold down his throat. He gulped. His hand had flown to his mouth. 

"Now then. Which would you say is stronger?"

"Does--" he coughed for air, "--does it have to be a contest?" he asked, and the king laughed.

After the second cup he felt heavy-headed enough to lean on Gyousou's shoulder without reservation. Except for breathing he kept still, so as not to dissuade the hand moving thickly on and through and under his mane. His hair fell in dark sheaves between his shoulder blades, down his back. His master was certain it had grown during his absence. There was that much to be said in favor of parting, he said. One could not have the pleasure of reunion without a farewell. 

Taiki gave an intermediary murmur, let his eyes fall shut. He felt himself on the verge of something, not tears but something not unlike them, a slackening or a long exhalation of the heart. Gyousou asked softly whether he was tired. He nodded without lifting his head.

"I didn't sleep well in Han." The liquor had burned his voice to a husk. "It was worse in Ren. It's so hot there, even at night, but they're so kind, Ren Taiho is so kind, I didn't want to complain...I was afraid they'd send someone into my room with a giant fan, to stand there waving it. And last night all I could think of was coming home." His fingers tightened on the king's sleeve. 

Gyousou leaned to set down his cup. "So it was sleep you missed," he said. 

"Oh...I didn't mean..."

"If it's sleep you want, you had better go to bed. Leave the lamp on." He leaned back toward Taiki to lower his voice. "Go on. Before I cover you here."

Obeying, Taiki slid upright. His legs shied under his weight, but held. As he crept from the outer chamber and entered the inner his face, his ears, his nape felt inflamed. He had not been sure--he was never sure, could never bring himself to assume, even when night after night he was bidden to stay. After so long an absence he had not dared.

In the bedchamber there were no attendants. The layered curtains were drawn back from the bed, both the gauze that filtered light and the opaque brocade that snuffed it. The interior was dark, unchanged from what he remembered, even to the arrangement of the pillows. The hearth below was unlit. The alcohol he had drunk washed him hot and cold by worsening turns. He had been warm sitting next to Gyousou. He looked at the empty bed. 

Nightclothes were laid out on a vanity, their silk blurring in the dull golden pool of lamplight. He started toward them, then halted in his tracks. The distress that consumed him was incongruous and immense. The wine, he thought. He had drunk too much. He had enough sense left to know it, but that was no comfort. It was on his lips to call out to the other room, to ask what was his master doing and why must he stand here tottering alone, but he stifled himself. His head grew insupportable, like a bud on a flimsy stalk. There was a divan a few steps away; it looked more bearable than the bed. Above all it was nearer. He slumped onto it and drew his feet up, burrowing his face into the niche of his arm. 

He had not been huddled there long when he heard his name being spoken. Sleep stung his eyes as he tried to open them. A hand soothed the hunch of his shoulder. "Kouri. What are you thinking. There's no need for this." 

He blinked at Gyousou, who was crouched beside him, not angry but troubled. Nothing he could say would sound other than absurd. "I didn't--"

"You don't have to join me. You can say no."

Taiki shook his head--no, not a no--not a no. He had gone to bed alone all that time, wishing not to be alone, and on some nights when half-asleep he had forgotten where he was, in what far country, and wondered why his master didn't come to him even though he waited--

The next thing he knew he was being lifted, easily, bodily. In a rush the bed was tilting underneath him, its canopy swooning overhead. Heavy silk buckled over his wrists. It seemed to come from everywhere: there was no sorting his own clothes from Gyousou's, or the bedclothes from either. As the ceiling stopped wheeling he began to distinguish the king's sleeves, and he clutched at them in handfuls, reveling in the volume of the cloth. Gyousou crouched over him with one forearm flat to the coverlet. Even through the glaze of drunkenness Taiki saw that his master was hungry. Fever in fine sharp filaments shot through his relief. He let his head fall back. 

"I've kept you waiting. That was never my intention." He leaned near, breathing over Taiki's brow. "I think tonight I am not entirely safe."

Taiki's throat quivered. He exhaled a fragmentary laugh. "Is Master Gyousou ever safe?"

For an instant Gyousou looked at him, not sharp but keen, as if brought up short. Then he bent to muffle his smile at Taiki's neck. "That is for Kouri to say." Through his nose he drew a slow interrogative breath. "This is new."

The perfume had been a gift from Han Taiho. They presume too much in Han, murmured Gyousou, but he kept nuzzling. His lips surveyed the line of Taiki's collarbone. With flickers of concentration Taiki strove to remember what Hanrin had told him, what was in the scent. He had been a diligent student once, in another world. Orange blossom, jessamine, bergamot. Passionflower to rouse ardor. Almond and honey. Ylang-ylang. 

Tobacco, said his master. Taiki grew confused until he saw what Gyousou had found: the sachet tucked into the breast of his robes had fallen free. He had forgotten it was there to be discovered. The indulgence in his master's smile diffused his shame. 

"I wondered what you'd done with that. Little thief." Pleasure roughened Gyousou's voice. He held the sachet between thumb and forefinger, then laid it on the coverlet to one side. His hand moved downward with purpose, unfolding. "What else have you hidden away in here, I wonder."

"Ah, nothing--"

"Nothing. For a nothing this is hard to overlook." 

The touch was not diffident but careful. It flushed a whimper from Taiki's throat. His fingers caught at whatever cloth was below them. Gyousou watched him in a way that made him want to cover his face, at least until his palms were displaced by kisses. When Gyousou murmured his name he looked tremulously up. 

"You said you wished I would come to you, while you were away." His master waited for assent. "I'd like to know what else you wished for, if you can tell me that."

He had wanted to. In letters written in small dangerous hours he had wanted to, and had not been brave enough. Now there was the wine in his blood and permission, more than sanction, entreaty. If he closed his eyes he was in a bedchamber in Han or Ren. In Ren he had lain uncovered, with only the scent of old tobacco on his pillow to hold night-blooming jasmine at bay. Half in dreams, he had waited for Gyousou to come and lie down behind him. There would be a small noise, a shift of cloth on cloth to wake him from drowsing. Then a soft kiss on his ear, or the side of his cheek, and he would turn his head for more kisses and be given them. In a little while the sash of his robe would go slack amid the scent of oil, of his master's body pressed close, beside him or over him, and the feel of a hand between his legs, stroking him there, outside. Not inside yet. His eyes flew open. The sum of weeks of longing swarmed into his mind altogether, too immediate for speech. His lips parted without sound.

Gyousou kissed his temple, rested his palm on the verge of Taiki's lap. His gentleness was resolute and faintly strained. "If you tell me I can make it so," he said. 

_Whatever Master Gyousou wants,_ Taiki began, but he stopped himself. He cast his eyes downward and aside. This was a more difficult deference. "I want to be held. And kissed, and--"

"And."

It was one thing to crave and another to annotate the cravings. "And--in Master Gyousou's hand--" He could not say it outright. "And--is--is this too much? I want to hear Master Gyousou's voice."

It was not too much, Gyousou said. It would do for a start. He eased his weight down along Taiki's side, made a pillow of his forearm under Taiki's nape. In his low voice like furls of sheer affection he began to speak, clothing Taiki with it while his hand uncovered. He parted silk from skin where it lay over Taiki's belly. He pushed the last fold of undone robe aside. "But how to begin. I'm not sure you understand how dearly I have missed you. Anyone will tell you how poor my manners have been. I was forever thinking 'This I must tell or show to Kouri, to see what his eyes will see,' and sulking at bystanders when I was foiled." 

Taiki turned his head and reached gracelessly; if he closed his eyes he could still make out by touch the smile in the shape of Gyousou's jaw. Every part of him was trembling. Exalted timbres suffused his palm as Gyousou murmured on. "I used to think nothing of marching thirty _li_ through the provinces, or climbing peaks in the Yellow Sea and bedding down on bare ground after, but Seishin is no better than bare ground if I cannot have you by me. I had hoped you would stay with me tonight." 

Their lips met, not a press but a glance, and then a longer meeting heavy with intent. Words interspersed the kisses. Gyousou's fingers interknitted his hair. "My heart, don't shiver so. When you only shiver I cannot tell whether I am doing wrong or right." 

A slow time passed before Taiki was at liberty to answer. Heat skittered like anxious flame between his legs, below his belly; liquor simmered in him through and through. He clung without knowing it to Gyousou's neck. He could not help the trembling, but he whispered _right_ to Gyousou when he could. 

His whole heart grew disheveled when Gyousou took hold of him in earnest, done with coaxing. The murmurs went on ruthless soft. "This hand," a stroke, another, "is not as good a sheath as it once was. Not even with the thought of you to steel me in it. I did think of you. I have none of your forbearance, to fast strictly for so long, but I thought of no one else." A shift in rhythm, a subtle change in grip. Taiki's breath seethed. His hips inscribed tight circles of their own accord. His heels dug silken divots on the surface of the bed.

"Come if you like," Gyousou said at last, as if there were choice in the matter, as if he were not the archer and Taiki the drawn bow. 

Afterward Taiki lay sinking, all tremors wrung out of him, in a muddle of looming sleep and ebbing pleasure and the memory of what his master had said. Gyousou stroked his hair as if not discontented. It might end with that, Taiki knew, with only that, if he fell into drowsing now. Gyousou would let him and go hungry another night. The thought of falling derelict in either love or care for this man rose in him like the onset of an ache. He struggled against his lassitude, against the lethargy of his limbs and their weight. 

With his arms braced in front of him he rolled onto his belly. The silk of the bedclothes chafed below his navel until he lifted his hips to crouch on forearms and knees. His hair slipped in falling strands past his chin. He turned to look over his shoulder at Gyousou, whose gaze had never wavered. Taiki had a little sense, if only a little, of what he must look like. He hid his face in his own mane at the knowing. He waited, unable to speak.

In another hearbeat his master's weight fell on him, like a lion from above on a deer. _You,_ said Gyousou, a short sough of breath, and he then quieted, setting teeth to Taiki's bowed nape. The nips were attentive, tender as if to belie the vehemence behind them. His mouth moved in descending kisses, a demarcation of the curve in Taiki's spine. Taiki raised his head, mouth open, as if to gulp for air after rising from undersea. The hand that grasped his hip felt molded to the bone under it. Between kisses his master spoke to the small of his back. "I wonder. In your wishes." Kiss, and a pause on the lowermost nub of his spine. "Did I do this."

Taiki clung to the bed. He had expected something else. There was no refusal in him, only faint presentiment that he might break and come apart beyond mending. He dampened his dry lips. He whispered that he had not thought as far as that. 

"Pity." 

His master began to lick as if to undo the seams of him, as if nectar were secreted in the furrow of his flesh. Taiki crumpled limply over his folded arms. He had no understanding of why this should feel good, why his body should answer by reveling and growing taut again instead of blanching, only that it did. It was easier to submit unthinking than to reconcile shame with willingness, with wanton assent. If Gyousou was unabashed he had no reason to be ashamed. He would have cried if any breath had been left to him. He exhaled little stillborn gasps into the sheets.

Gyousou made a savoring sound directly into him, kneading him further open with one hand. The other plied between Taiki's legs, never ungentle but unrelenting, cupping and stroking him back to a tenuous peak. Taiki rocked into his grasp and whimpered, strained back against the hot press of his mouth. To be caught between the two for any length was unendurable. Release when it came seized him and shook him, as if by the nape. 

He slumped. The silk under his cheek was mangled from incessant clutching. His skin throbbed with strange continuing impressions, like the glare that lingers behind eyelids in the aftermath of bright light or the sun. He felt stripped of all perception beyond touch and instinct, and a vague regret for foundered purpose that melted as soon as it formed. 

"Kouri." His name was a dark thread to tether him. Gyousou stretched out beside him, resting almost no weight on him but a surfeit of warmth. "Rest for a while. There's no hurry." 

The words absolved him. At any other time he might have blinked to hear Gyousou say them, but his eyes were already closed.

*

When Taiki woke he had no doubt of where he was, not when the pillow and the bedding smelled entirely of his master. A blanket lay draped across him, covering him to the shoulders. Beneath it he stretched his limbs and let them curl again. If he had slept deeply enough for dreams he did not remember them. His languor was slow to leave him, but he felt unstifled, at ease. He opened his eyes. 

He was alone in the bed. Gyousou was near, standing in lamplight just beyond the half-drawn curtain, facing the table where a porcelain ewer sat among jade vials. He had unbound his hair and shed all but a single robe of dark blue while Taiki slept. In his hand was a cup. He filled the cup from the ewer, raised it, and drank it in one tilt only to refill it. Watching, Taiki felt the dryness of his own throat. He stirred. 

Gyousou turned from the table and smiled to see him awake. He leaned to offer the cup, which held not wine but water, cool on Taiki's lips. When the cup was empty Gyousou withdrew it. 

"How do you feel," he asked.

"...Good," said Taiki to the pillow, in a small voice. 

"More water?"

Taiki shook his head. Setting the cup aside, Gyousou took one of the small vials from the table and stowed it in his sleeve. He drew the curtains open out of habit, to preserve his view of the room, and left the lamp burning. In the bed he settled upright next to Taiki, leaning against the cushions that abutted the wall. Taiki shifted nearer to him without waiting to be beckoned. Had he slept a long time, he wondered.

"An hour or so."

"I'm sorry."

Gyousou laid a hand on Taiki's head and began to smooth his hair, stroking it aside from his face. Taiki was sure it must be in disarray. The stroking slowed and lengthened toward his nape, down his back. 

"You had a long journey. I gave you wine that can besot a man three times your size, then taxed you further afterward. You've earned your rest." 

"It's not that." Taiki looked down at the bedclothes. "I'm sorry I was nervous, before."

"Nervous?"

"I don't know why, I just...remembering a fire when you're far away isn't the same as standing next to it. You forget how big and how--how hot it is." He paused. He ducked his face into the covers. "What am I saying."

"Go on." Gyousou was laughing almost silently. Taiki looked up, forgetting to ration his glances. In the glow of the lamp Gyousou's skin looked burnished, like the sprawl of a bronze lion at a temple gate. Shadows the color of brandy collected where the robe parted at his chest. The line of his profile defined the light. Taiki's throat went dry again, not with thirst. He swallowed.

"Is it true, though?"

"Hm?"

"When I was gone, did you really think of me and...."

Gyousou looked at him. Looked, and kept looking until Taiki's head began to swim and he wondered if the wine in his blood had retreated only to rise again like a tide and overtake him. The hand on his mane paused in mid-stroke. 

"They say kings are no longer men," murmured Gyousou. "But I doubt I am anything else, in essentials." He lowered his voice in earnest. "Does it trouble you?"

Taiki's face and nape felt hot enough to scald the hand that touched him. He shook his head minutely. It took him a moment to recover speech.

"When you think of me, like that..." he faltered. "I don't know if it's all right to ask this."

"Ask."

"What...what kinds of things do you think of?"

"You. As you are."

"Is that all?"

Gyousou narrowed his eyes. "I think of you under me," he said deliberately, "or astride. Looking as you do. Trust me, it serves." 

"But--I want to know, what kinds of things. What other things. Unless...are they very bad?"

"What, did you expect depravity?" Gyousou's teeth flashed. "Or do you want another earful of talk?"

"I told you about the things I wished for," said Taiki, and hearing the faint grievance in his voice Gyousou began to laugh outright. Taiki reached for him, trying to make him understand. "Master, you said 'If you tell me I can make it so,' but it's the same for me. I want to know." He gripped the rumple of cloth above Gyousou's sash with one hand. The blanket had slipped down past his own waist, but he let it lie where it had fallen. He was far from cold. "I thought...I thought you wanted to, and then you didn't. Did I do something wrong?"

"Shh, no." Gyousou enfolded Taiki and drew him upward. "You blame yourself too quickly."

"Then...you don't want to?"

"Is that what you think," said Gyousou. His eyes were low-lidded, with a starkness in them that made Taiki feel heavy and lightheaded both at once. Taiki shivered and whispered no. He didn't really think that. 

"No. But I wonder if you've seen how Keito feeds when he has gone too long without a meal. It is quick, but not kind to the ewe."

"Master--"

"I have a little more wit than Keito. Do not ask me to be uncareful with you." 

Taiki shifted in dismay. "Master, you're not--whatever you want, anything, I--"

"I know." Gyousou's voice roughened and softened in the same breath. "I know you would." 

He sank backward, crushing pillows under his weight. The wall stopped his shoulderblades and braced them. His palms slid upward over Taiki's body with no concession to patience, then cupped Taiki's chin within reach of his lips, as if dipping water to drink bare-handed. 

"Come here, then. I've hardly had a taste of you yet." 

Not true, thought Taiki faintly. Not true, and not to be argued. He opened his mouth under the kiss, tried to yield up whatever sweetness was in him. He whimpered without meaning to when Gyousou took it as his due. 

What would it be like, he wondered, to be savaged. To be flung down and pinned unmercifully, manhandled past all allowance of escape. Maybe Gyousou was right not to test him with ferocity. Gentleness was harrowing enough, and reined-in need--and maybe he should be glad he was at least allowed to glimpse both the need and the reins. But there had to be some middle ground, between caution and abandon--some place he could try to reach--

He had scarcely grasped at Gyousou's sash, given only a faint tug before Gyousou's hand was at the knot to rake it undone. Taiki shivered at the upward press of bared heat against his belly. He would have bent to Gyousou's lap and done what he could, unpracticed as he was, but Gyousou drew him forward and upward, until he had to put out a hand to keep from pitching into the wall. 

"Master," he gulped, "please--"

"That was one." Gyousou murmured into the join of his neck and shoulder, just on the verge of setting teeth. 

"One, one what?"

"One of the other things." The nips tracked downward, along his collarbone, then downward still.

"What--'please'? Ah--"

He stiffened and hunched. Gyousou had found his target. When his master touched him there, there, like that, Taiki had to struggle not to clamp his entire body around that point on his chest. Gyousou lipped and suckled, never hard, never even skirting the outer rim of pain. The heat from his mouth spread like spilled water through Taiki, past the pit of his stomach to the base of his spine. Taiki made a witless noise. His fingertips assailed the wall. 

Gyousou spoke without pulling away. "Do you like this?"

Taiki swallowed. His clutching answered better than his voiceless _yes. Yes, but. I want to do something for--_

"Do you think you could do it for me?"

For a second he was confounded. He tried to regain his breath. "Just...like that?" 

"Like that." 

"Is that one of the other things, too?" 

"It may be."

Gyousou slid a hand into his hair again, to caress without constraining. Taiki huddled down and laid his forehead against Gyousou's chest, as if the breadth of it would steady him. He turned his cheek toward the sound of Gyousou's heart. He peeked sideways. The strangeness of what he was about to do loomed large, then dwindled. His own diffidence nettled him. He shut his eyes and sought not by sight but by touch, with parted lips. 

A sound that was neither a sigh nor a growl rattled Gyousou's throat. His hand in Taiki's mane grew lackadaisical. Taiki could feel approval in the slackening of his limbs, the exacting angle of his hips. 

"You can use your teeth."

Taiki lifted his mouth, uncertain. He didn't like to be bitten there, but--

Gyousou's eyes were on him, molten. All his misgivings went up in smoke. He couldn't bring himself to do worse than nip, or cradle the little nub between his teeth and lower lip, but when he did Gyousou's hands smothered him with praise. In time they guided him to the other side, where he must do it all again and yes, again, and soon it was no longer strange in the least. He nursed blindly. He thought of nothing, not even the hard length shunted against his midriff or the way his own body begged to answer it. Gyousou murmured to him as if to an infant, uttering words no mother or father ever would. 

At last Taiki had to break off to breathe. Gyousou grasped his arms and drew him upward, then shifted their weight to one side. The brunt of his arousal pressed against Taiki's, unchecked. Can you do one thing more for me, he asked. From among the bedclothes he retrieved the jade vial and opened it. The oil was thin and scentless, easily spread. Taiki shivered and nodded yes. 

He bit down a cry as Gyousou wrapped them both in hand to stroke. What wracked him then felt less like pleasure than like a rarefied ache. Gyousou was speaking to him, huskily, in concentrated breaths. That he could speak at all left Taiki dumbly sure of his omnipotence. 

"There are other things yet. Things I want to ask of you." 

His face tipped close. Their foreheads bumped and met where Taiki's was most tender. Taiki pushed back with a mute whimper and clung to him--his chest, his shoulders--as if to the sheer rock of a cliff. 

"Not all at once." Gyousou's hand moved between them exhaustively. His other arm tightened around Taiki's back. "A little at a time. Haven't you taught me that's the better way?" His breath quickened almost to laughter. "You beauty. Come for me again. With me, now."

It was a relief to obey, to go together. The ache splintered and gave way and let him fall. The aftermath struck this time like a weight descending, so sudden that the density of his own body staggered him. His head sank on Gyousou's chest as if there were no other pillow in the world. He felt wrung out like a cloth, too limp to move or dream of moving, unless it were to curl his fingers in unconscious reflex. Even his master's hand lay still where it had settled, half-buried in the tumble of hair over his nape. 

The remnants of his thoughts were too diffuse to be collected. He listened to the great heartbeat under his ear as it slowed to a more indolent pace. The sound of it suffused him, but it reminded him that in the end he had made it race for only a little while. He sighed.

Gyousou murmured a low question. In his haze Taiki was slow to realize that the sigh might have roused his master's wariness of discontent. He turned his face to nuzzle before he answered. 

"I still want to know."

"Hm?"

"The other things," he said. "All of them."

The hand at rest in his mane took up its work again. Taiki knew by the easy weight of it that his impudence would go unrebuked, might even be rewarded. He could hear the smile in Gyousou's voice. 

"Tenacious, you. Tomorrow I'll tell you another."


End file.
